[T]hese aquatic incendiaries have come forward at the present alarming juncture, and announced a most potent discovery, which is to guarantee our port from the visit of any foreign marauders … a cunning machine shrewdly y’clep’d a Torpedo, by which the stoutest line of battle ship … may be caught napping, and decomposed in a twinkling.8
The War of 1812 was primarily a naval war. There were stories of a submarine built by Silas Clowden Halsey, reportedly used in 1814 against a British warship anchored at the harbor of New London, Connecticut. Hartford’s Samuel Colt, who had proposed the use of electrically triggered underwater mines in the 1840s, drew a sketch of the vessel.9 The American Civil War brought on a flurry of submarine designs, few of which had any impact on naval warfare at the time other than the Confederate submarine Hunley.10 Floating and sub-surface mines, however, became a common defensive technology used by the Confederacy.11 The Hunley carried a device referred to as a “spar torpedo,” an explosive device held at the end of a long pole or spar. That system became a common weapon used on small surface vessels called torpedo-boats.
A self-propelled torpedo would not appear until after the Civil War, initiated during the late 1860s by an English engineer, Robert Whitehead, based on a concept by an Austrian naval officer, Giovanni Luppis. Several countries purchased Whitehead torpedoes, or the manufacturing rights, in the 1870s. By 1875, designs were being considered within the U.S. Navy, specifically at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island.
Introductory remarks to a publication titled “Notes on Movable Torpedoes” produced between 1874 and 1875 at the torpedo station defined the prevailing opinion regarding these new weapons. Submarine mines, or what were called “stationary torpedoes,” which proliferated during the Civil War, were considered primarily “for defense of channels against the entry of fleets.” Yet by the decade of the 1870s, these new “Movable or Locomotive Torpedoes to assail ships on the high seas” were becoming a reality.12 In this same publication was an 1873 article by an Austrian officer, Lieutenant J. Lehnert, titled “Torpedo Vessels in Naval Engagements,” in which he predicted the interest, and dread, this new weapon was about to bring to the world:
The gradual and probable introduction of Torpedo vessels into fleets, the general emotion which the appearance of these terrible engines has created, the attention with which seamen of all countries watch the progress of this new arm, now an offensive power, and finally the complete revolution which they will probably produce in naval tactics are sufficient reasons for rendering the study of Torpedoes not only necessary, but attractive to officers of all navies.
Torpedoes carried by vessels constructed for that purpose, and which, discharged in a given direction, retain under water a motion which is inherent in them and thus reach the enemy at considerable distances. This system is known under the name of Whitehead-Lupis [or Fish] Torpedoes.13
Lieutenant Francis M. Barber, instructor at the torpedo station, wrote his “Lecture on the Whitehead Torpedo,” a thorough description of what was known about the torpedo in 1874.14 At that time, the U.S. Navy was considering production of its own torpedo, which Barber described in a section titled “Plans for Fish Torpedo Submitted to Board of Ordnance, June 1st, 1874.” Barber mentioned that the “general idea which was originally intended to control the construction of this proposed fish was to approximate as closely as possible to what was supposed to be the plan of the Whitehead …”15 Barber then added a copy of a letter to Commodore Wm. Jeffers, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, from Lieutenant Commander W.M. Folger, a naval observer at the Whitehead factory in Fiume, Austria, January 6, 1875. Folger had arrived at the factory two days earlier and met with Whitehead. The worldwide interest was becoming obvious:
The German government has ordered from the Messrs. Whitehead & Co. 100 of the latest improved torpedoes, and had advanced funds for the establishment of a regular torpedo factory…. The French government has ordered 50 … In addition to those already known to the Bureau, the subject is being considered by the Governments of Russia, Denmark, and Belgium.16
It was still premature to see these “fish” torpedoes launched from a submarine, but by the end of the century, John Holland was ready to provide the U.S. Navy with this capability. Other nations were also anxious to enter the new century with at least a small fleet of submarines outfitted with Whitehead torpedoes, and the Holland Torpedo Boat Company had a major influence on these early efforts. The Navy’s first submarine, the USS Holland (SS-1), commissioned in 1900, had a single torpedo tube and carried three torpedoes.17 As Germany quietly prepared for war, the next decade saw major changes in submarine designs and operational capabilities, along with improvements in torpedoes. This became the weapon that brought the U-boat its fame—and infamy.
AFTER WHITEHEAD, THEN SCHWARTZKOPFF AND BLISS-LEAVITT
At the beginning of the war the torpedo factory at Friedrichsort had been the only place where our torpedoes were manufactured; but during the war the engineering works (formerly L. Schwartzkopff) in Berlin, which in earlier years had also manufactured torpedoes, was converted into a torpedo factory, as were other works as well.18
Admiral Scheer continued: “Under the direction of the Chief of the Torpedo Factories, Rear-Admiral Hering, the enormously increased demand for the manufacture of torpedoes was fully satisfied …”19 By 1917, German submarines were being sent to sea fully anticipating the use of their increased capacity to carry torpedoes (see next page). Prior to 1917, however, much of the destruction of commercial vessels was accomplished when the U-boat had surfaced and fired on the unarmed vessels with deck-mounted guns, leaving their expensive torpedoes for larger, high-value prey. Britain’s Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe recognized that “before the days of the unrestricted submarine campaign, and although ships were frequently torpedoed, very large numbers were still being sunk by gun-fire.”20
Schwartzkopff torpedoes captured during the Spanish-American War and held at the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, Rhode Island. (NHHC NH 84471) Inset: Detonator on one of the remaining examples of the Schwartzkopff torpedo. (Courtesy Naval Undersea Warfare Center; Richard Allen)
In the United States, torpedo development was centered at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island, beginning in 1869. In 1920, a pamphlet produced at the torpedo station outlined its five decade history.21 By the end of the nineteenth century, several hundred torpedoes of various designs had been purchased for testing in Narragansett Bay—the Hall, Lay, Howell, and the wire-guided Patrick torpedoes, for example—but the most popular was the Whitehead. During the Spanish American War, however, even the German Schwartzkopff torpedo was among the station’s inventory, where a “tube was mounted for experimental purposes, and twelve torpedoes were purchased and sent to the station.” After the war, the torpedo station received sixteen of these torpedoes recovered from Spanish ships. Many were so badly damaged, however, that “[the] shells of these torpedoes are still in use [in 1920] at the Station as light posts.” In 1900, the Navy’s first submarine, the USS Holland, arrived in Narragansett Bay, armed with three Whitehead Mark II torpedoes. During sea trials, the Holland demonstrated the ability to approach the battleship Kearsarge undetected.22
In 1904, the U.S. Navy contracted the E.W. Bliss Company to produce a torpedo similar to the Whitehead, based on designs by Frank M. Leavitt. A factory to accommodate an anticipated need for increased production was built at the station in 1907. The following are excerpts from the torpedo station pamphlet:
In